The purpose of this course is to introduce you to current global challenges in conservation and development, including changes in both sectors. This course will inspire you to rethink assumptions to address global challenges in conservation and development, and introduce you to new models and approaches that harness technological, behavioral, and financial innovation. This course will equip you with the insights, skills and approaches necessary to successfully overcome these obstacles. In addition, this course will provide participants with the tools, models, and approaches to address global grand challenges in conservation and development, to question fundamental assumptions, and to create and execute new solutions. Course participants will be trained in the processes around innovation and design to address global grand challenges. This includes content focused on constructing innovation pipelines, principals of design and engineering unique to the developing world and to conservation (Design for the Other 90%), on harnessing and developing disruptive technologies, principles of behavior and marketing, and on overcoming the challenges with setting up social ventures.
The course format will facilitate the development of a global community of innovators who will help solve the current and future grand challenges our planet faces in conservation and development, and will encourage thinking about how to do so that rethinks traditional assumptions and approaches within both conservation and development. This course will leverage the incredible idealism and interest in social entrepreneurship, design, and innovation among the millennials, in the US and abroad, and is intended to appeal to those interested in the maker movement. It also seeks to engage individuals in the developing world who are closest to the problems of conservation and development, who would benefit from the approaches taught in the course, and who can leverage their own knowledge of local culture.

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Grand Challenges in Conservation

We are in the middle of a period of extraordinary change on the planet, a sixth great mass extinction. Unlike the previous mass extinction events, this is the first extinction in Earth’s history that is driven by the actions of a single species. During this period, the earth has been fundamentally changing physically, chemically, biologically, and ecologically. The problems of extinction and habitat destruction are increasing exponentially, while our solutions are incremental. Conservation remains at times technophobic, risk-averse, reactionary, intransigent, and uninspiring, but it is changing. Much as humans have caused these problems, we have the ability to solve them. This module will present the Grand Challenges in Conservation, from wildlife trade, to energy, to climate change, to addressing the underlying drivers of global extinction. You will hear from leaders of some of the world’s most important conservation organizations working on these topics. We will examine the current debate underway in the future of conservation. <p> This week's module will demonstrate ways to: (1) apply our unparalleled innovation capacity and harness our technological advances to engineer resilience to global environmental changes; and (2) change demand and incentive structures to alter our behavior, and improve our ability to monitor and protect species around the world. Finally, this module looks in-depth at one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots, Madagascar, an 8th continent that has served as a laboratory for evolution. To get started, begin by watching the video "Conservation Grand Challenges."